How to improve your Raiser’s Edge gift processing approach

Gift processing might not be the most exciting part of fundraising. But it is one of the most important activities for a nonprofit fundraising team. Processing gifts efficiently and accurately helps your entire organization to acknowledge gifts in a timely manner and start putting funds to work for your mission as soon as possible. 

There are multiple ways to improve gift processing using the popular fundraising platform, Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT. One of the best places to start is to analyze your entire gift processing approach. 

Let’s look at three effective ways to evaluate your gift processing approach in Raiser’s Edge so that you can uncover opportunities to improve data accuracy, reduce manual work, and save time that can be spent on other fundraising activities. 

1. Document and review each step.

Your organization receives donations from multiple channels – from paper checks to online donations. If you don’t already have one, make a map of various gift types, where they come from, and how you treat them. For example, how do online gifts get added to the Raiser’s Edge database? Do those donors receive an email acknowledgement, a paper acknowledgement, or both? Are new donors tagged for special attention or put into a welcome series?

As you review the map, think about any steps that might be eliminated, simplified, or automated to save time.
 

2. Streamline and automate manual steps.

Put workflow tools to work to streamline and automate manual steps in your gift processing. For example:

• If your team is repeatedly entering a lot of the same information, then ask your Raiser’s Edge database administrator to set up business rules to automatically populate that information.*
• Set up templates for batch gift entry so that your data entry staff does not need to set up batch gifts from scratch every time.*
• Use Omatic, which integrates with Raiser’s Edge, to bring in donation data from, say, a fundraising event, in a bulk format.
• Use a tool like Microsoft Power Automate, which also integrates with Raiser’s Edge, to automate gift processing steps, like gift acknowledgements, after data entry. 

* This functionality is in NXT Database View only. We will be excited to see it show up in the front-end experience. 

Discover more ways that Microsoft tools can help you supercharge Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge. Read the article, How Nonprofits Can Enhance Blackbaud Data with Microsoft Tools 

Using these types of tools not only helps your gift processing team to work more efficiently but also helps to improve data accuracy—all by reducing error-prone manual work.
 

3. Build gift processing best practices into your development plan.

Analyzing and improving your gift processing isn’t a one-time activity. As your organization evolves, so will your processes. So, your gift processing practices will need to evolve, too.

Build time into your annual development plan to review your gift processing map, update your documentation, and streamline manual steps. Allocating time for these activities will help ensure your team has bandwidth to focus on them as part of their action plan for the year.

Learn more about improving gift processing with Raiser’s Edge

If you’re ready to improve your nonprofit’s gift processing in Raiser’s Edge, the Heller Consulting team is ready to assist. We can help you assess your use of Raiser’s Edge and identify tools and approaches to help you save time and improve the accuracy of your gift processing. Contact us today to learn more and get started. 

About the Author

Jessica Huffman Lewis

Jessica joins Heller with more than 20 years of experience working at nonprofits like the National Domestic Violence Hotline, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Planned Parenthood, and Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Texas. She's filled nearly every role imaginable from... Read More